Search results for: "Attention"

  1. Page 27
  2. All Four Tetrads at Once
     … It says that when you pay attention to the breath, the act of paying attention generates a feeling—or is a feeling, the text says—but basically the act of attention helps to fabricate a feeling, what’s called a feeling not-of-the-flesh. As for the mind, it says that there’s no mindfulness of breathing without mindfulness and alertness. And as … 
  3. Still
     … So, you move your attention down. Again, try not to have the sense that you’re up in the head looking down into the chest, say. Try to be in the chest. Try to be in the abdomen, wherever you choose as your spot. Notice that there’s an awareness already there. You don’t have to impose your notions of breath on it … 
  4. Admitting Mistakes
     … It requires skill, it requires attention, and not just thinking, “Still, still, still, still, still.” You’ve got to notice where you are and what should be done—what the dangers are in the position you’re currently in and what can be done to prevent them. Or if you find yourself slipping off into one of the extremes, what you can do to … 
  5. Feelings Not of the Flesh
     … You work on it because you’re trying to see the extent to which you do create your feelings, through the act of attention. Normally, as we go through the day, we have an instinctive way of focusing on some feelings and not on others. Some people have a tendency to focus more on pains, some people have a tendency to focus more on … 
  6. Self-starting
     … In fact, this is the topic of appropriate attention: looking at things in terms of cause and effect, action and result, and learning to explore the power we have to improve our minds, to improve our actions, to improve the results of our actions to see how far that can go. One of the emotions that’s supposed to be inspired by that reflection … 
  7. Tranquility & Insight
     … Why on earth would that be? Well, because you’re not paying attention, so you don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve paid much more attention to things outside, and not enough attention to your own mind. This is dangerous, because things outside can do only so much damage to you, but your own mind can do real damage. But at the … 
  8. Taking a Stance
     … It’s your own lack of attention that allows the breath to get uncomfortable. So pay attention and then learn to work with the breath. See what kind of rhythm feels good, because when the breath goes well it gives you strength, a sense of wellbeing, a sense of being nourished, around which all your other good qualities of mind can gather. When they … 
  9. True to the Breath
     … The problem is there our attention isn’t there all the time. We can go wandering around, or worse than wandering around: We jump around. As a result, the mind knows no peace. It keeps creating little worlds for itself and then suddenly finds itself in those worlds. They can take it many years, many miles away. And because those worlds are fabricated, after … 
  10. The Need for Stillness
     … The cause of suffering, he says, is sending the mind out, sending your attention, sending your awareness outside, and suffering is what results from that. The path, he says, is having the mind watch the mind, having the mind see the mind. The end of suffering is what results from that. So it’s the movement that makes us suffer, and just having the … 
  11. What Is Skillful?
     … And we have some control over how we breathe, and we have some control over how we pay attention to the breath. We try to develop our skills so that we can expand that amount of control, and in doing so we gain a lot of insight. The insight then helps us let go of the greed, aversion, and delusion, so that our actions … 
  12. Surveying the World
     … Then you apply acts of attention and intention. As they stick here, they pay careful attention to what’s going on, and you can create a state of concentration. If you can stay on this level, then when you see thoughts that would go out into the world again, you put them aside. Try to stay just on this level of events happening right … 
  13. The Intelligence of Restraint
     … Somdet Mahawirawong was taken aback, and said, “Well, it shows that you know how to listen.” But what does it mean to know how to listen? It’s basically applying the principle of appropriate attention, which, again, is right view. You could take the lesson of the impermanence of things and do almost anything you wanted with it: “Things are impermanent, so grab onto … 
  14. Right Livelihood
    Of all the factors in the path, right livelihood is probably the one that receives the least attention. And so it’s good to pay some attention to it. The definition in the Canon is pretty simple: you avoid wrong livelihood and you support yourself with right livelihood. It’s hardly even a definition at all, because it doesn’t explain the term. In … 
  15. The Pursuit of Happiness & Goodness
     … But the goodness of your character is something the Buddha paid a lot of attention to. You’re not just doing a technique here. In other words, you’re not just getting good at the technical aspects of being with the breath, getting the mind to settle down. If you do it well, you do it right, you’re developing some goodness as well … 
  16. Clinging
     … So your views and your sense of self are there to focus more and more attention on what should and shouldn’t be done. Now, in Freud’s analysis, the shoulds, or the superego, are pretty oppressive, because he lived in a culture where the ultimate superego, God, was not really all that concerned with your happiness. But the superego in the Buddha’s … 
  17. The Duties of Happiness
     … Wherever it’s most prominent, wherever it’s easiest to focus your attention, settle your mind right there. Now allow the breath to become comfortable. Notice that statement: It is a matter of allowing; but it’s telling you something you should do. Yet it’s also something that, at the same time, should be very comfortable right in the present moment, and you … 
  18. Measuring Progress
     … That’s where you want to focus your attention. This is especially important when things went really well yesterday and they don’t seem to be going quite so well today. You can get fixated on that if you’re not paying full attention to right now, and that makes today’s meditation even worse. So you drop that thought and stay where you … 
  19. Trustworthy Judgment
     … You tell it to come, and it doesn’t pay any attention. You tell it to go sit, go to bed or whatever, it doesn’t any attention at all because it’s not trained. Well, the mind that’s not trained creates a lot more problems than a dog. It can mess up your whole life, not just your house. You suddenly get … 
  20. Joyous Endurance
     … Direct your attention to the breath. Direct your whole mind to the breath. And try to keep it in that direction. In the Mangala Sutta, this is called having yourself rightly directed. It’s one of the ways that you bless yourself, protect yourself. The nature of the mind is that it doesn’t just sit in one place. It moves. The problem is … 
  21. Harmlessness
     … And you’re actually more able to be sensitive to other people when the basis of your attention is your breath, rather than what it normally is: your moods, your preoccupations. So you look for whatever opportunity there is to practice. There’s a common phrase that you try to bring your practice into your life. Actually, it should be the other way around … 
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